After giving this some thought and talking with the family (more than I have been about this for the last few weeks), I think we are looking at well under $2000 in costs. More likely in the $1600 range. It would be $1400 but I am looking to have a backup controller.
With selling off old equipment (2 LOR residential units and a mp3 director), that should take a decent chunk out of the total. Add on dumping all the incan and led strings for maybe $1 each to locals and I think the net cost would be just over $1000.
So, with all that said, I ordered 2 Falcon F16v2 Pixel Controllers w/ mounting plates for about $425 and we are “doing this”!
Off to read more forums and wait for the holidaycoro pre-sale to pick up most of the other stuff!
I told my wife thanks tonight, for purchasing the item I had been looking at for many months now. She said “you are welcome” and asked what I just bought myself.
Truth is that I had been looking at the last version for many months to use in several projects but never cared enough to pull the trigger. In most cases, I found an alternate solution to handle the task at hand or realized I just didn’t care that much about the task to spend time playing with the Pi.
Now that I am moving away from LOR and my MP3 show director, I have no desire to go back to using a pc or laptop to run shows. I did that my first year and honestly it was a pain because I had moments where I wanted to use the laptop but was tethered to the FM transmitter and the 1st controller. Plus, I can swap sd cards and use it for other stuff the rest of the year.
So, with no further delay… I picked up a complete starter kit on amazon and it will be here in 2 days thanks to prime. If you want to take a look, here is the link for it on Amazon.
I have used my shopping list to order $565.11 worth of items from holidaycoro.com. This is their pre-sale #1 that should be shipping out in February.
I picked up:
- Pixel strips for the arches (5 meters each, to be cut in 1/2, so 3 for 6 arches)
- Two 350w 12v power supplies (with cords)
- 25 pixnode stripes (so I have some extra for splicing and playing)
- 2 enclosures, one for inside and one for outside
- A ton of waterproof connectors (although I needed 20 of one type and they only had 19 left)
- Only 10 sets of bullet pixels (I waited too long and the square nodes for the megatree sold out… gotta wait for another presale)
- 200 feet of 3 conductor cable (checked on amazon and didn’t really see a better deal) – although I may not need it with the rolls of SPT1 i have in the garage.
- Waterproof labels, 2 sets, because why not…
- EasyPix Controller – was unplanned but I thought it would be nice to have a quick way to test pixels without firing up more stuff on the bench and I saw someone else mention using it for this purpose.
I was trying to get this order in a quickly as possible before something else ran out of stock (like the waterproof connectors and the square pixels). I will have to wait for the next presale to grab more pixels and the tree topper stuff.
Video from the street looks ok, as long as you pull focus properly and set your F stop correctly on your DSLR. Obviously I did not this year as I was in a hurry and years past have been hit and miss based on drive by traffic and other stuff going on. Why not use something that rises above it all?
DJI is having a 10 year anniversary sale on the Phantom 3 quadcopters and both the standard and advanced models are $200 off. This means $499 for the std and $799 for the advanced. This price is being replicated across most retailers, including Amazon. Unfortunately I missed (by a couple hours) where Newegg messed up the pricing during the start of the sale and had a bundle with the Advanced, an extra battery, and the hardshell case for the same price. Many people got in on the deal, but not me.
Despite missing out on the great deal, I have received my Phantom from Amazon and hope to use it like I have seen others do with filming their shows. I actually bought a small indoor Hubsan X4 back in the summer and flew that around a bit before upgrading to a Syma X5C-1 before Christmas, which has a cheap camera and can be flown outside. Both were great trainers and I hope to enjoy the P3 as a video/photo platform… since the other 2 were more for fun/stunts.
Like most things after a move, I have no idea where my old soldering iron has ended up. That said, it is not like I had a nice one or even most of the extra stuff I would need to setup a soldering station in the garage. I barely did any soldering in the past and most of that was like 15-20 years ago. So, it is time to do some shopping and prepare myself for the presales items that will require this gear. Hoping to keep my cost around $50 to $60 for everything but not skimp on items that make my life easier vs harder but cheaper. Continue reading Soldering needs, can’t find my old stuff →
Time for the second pre-sale purchase from Holidaycoro.com. I was looking to pick up remaining items for the megatree as I missed out on the square pixels during the last pre-sale. I also needed a topper mounting system and some strain relief clips for the PixNode strips that will be possibly anchored to the ground with huge nails. Not sure if I will use it, but I also grabbed a center post load spreader, although I will likely drill through the middle and drive a piece of rebar down to stop any movement if it lifts at all.
Order is below:
Continue reading More pre-sale from holidaycoro →
A journey into sight and sound (with RGB now)
